Who can approve, and where

Approving in Business-Gym is a decision made in the app by a signed-in member. A short list of workflow approvals can also be decided from a link, but everything with an effect outside the platform is deliberately kept inside a real session.

This page covers who can hold which role, what a decide-link is allowed to do, and what today’s answer is for phones. Some of what you may have read elsewhere is ahead of the product — that is called out plainly below.

Who can be a member, and with what role?

Business-Gym ships exactly four membership roles:

Role	Name in the product
Owner	owner
Admin	admin
Approver	approver
Read	read

That is the whole list. If a deck, a proposal or a spec you have been sent names any other role, it is describing something that is not in the product — check the four names above before you plan around it.

Roles are set per membership, not per person — someone can hold one role here and a different one elsewhere.

Can I approve from a link in an email or Teams message?

Sometimes, and the boundary is strict: an emailed link can decide a workflow approval, but nothing that sends, spends, or writes to another system.

Decide-links are allow-listed to workflow approvals only. If the item’s source is a workflow, the link can carry your decision. Everything else is refused by the link and has to be decided in the app.

That means the side-effecting kinds are in-app only:

• inbound_draft_reply — drafting a reply to an inbound item
• crm_outreach — anything that contacts a person in your CRM
• system-of-record writes
• and the rest of the kinds that change something outside Business-Gym

A link is not a general approve button

Do not build a process on the assumption that your team can clear the queue from their inboxes. Only workflow items can be decided that way. The rest will still be sitting in the approval queue waiting for someone to open it.

Why can’t I approve a batch of invoices by replying to an email?

Because replying to a message is not a decision channel. Some material describes clearing several invoice-style approvals by answering an email. That is not how the product works, and it is worth being clear about rather than letting you find out mid-month.

The reason is protection, not friction. An email reply is easy to spoof, easy to send from a device you no longer control, and easy to trigger by accident from a phone lock screen. A decision that moves money, writes into a system of record or sends something under your name is taken in a signed-in session where the platform knows it was you.

So: open the approvals page, and decide there. Batch decisions still exist inside the queue — you can apply one decision across several items — but the decision itself is made in the app.

Can I approve on my phone?

Yes, in the browser. There is no native mobile app — no iOS app, no Android app, nothing in an app store today.

The answer for phones is the responsive web /approvals page. It works in a mobile browser, and it is the same queue you see on a laptop.

Make it one tap

Add the approvals page to your phone’s home screen. You get a one-tap route into the queue without waiting for a native app that does not exist yet.

How will I know something is waiting for me?

Through Teams and email digests from your Concierge channels.

There is no push notification infrastructure. Your phone will not buzz when an item lands, and there is no in-app push to subscribe to. If a decision is time-critical, plan on the digest cadence or on someone opening the queue — not on an instant alert.

What can I only do on the web?

Approving is the mobile-friendly part. Most of the rest of the platform is web-only by design:

• Workflow editor
• Integrations setup
• Knowledge-base management
• Settings
• Team and permissions
• Analytics
• Billing

Purchase is web-only too, and that is a deliberate choice rather than a gap waiting to be filled.

The practical read: a phone is for deciding, a laptop is for configuring. If someone on your team is travelling and needs to add a connector or change a role, that waits for a browser on a real machine.

What is not there yet?

• Native mobile app — not available. Use the responsive web approvals page.
• Push notifications — not available. Teams and email digests via Concierge channels are the notification path today.
• Approving side-effecting items from a link or an email reply — not available, and not planned as a convenience. Decide-links stay allow-listed to workflow approvals.

Next: working the approval queue covers how to read an item and check that the action you approved actually ran.